Dow Jones rival bid plan may include Bancrofts: reports

NEW YORK (Reuters/CNNMoney.com) -- General Electric Co. and Pearson Plc may challenge News Corp.'s $5 billion bid for Dow Jones & Co., with a plan that could let Dow Jones's controlling family to keep an interest in the company, the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal reported on their Web sites on Sunday.

One option for GE and Pearson would be to allow the Bancroft family to keep a 20 percent stake in the company, reported the Financial Times, which is published by Pearson.

Selling Dow Jones, Wall Street Journal's publisher, to GE and Pearson, would be a better journalistic fit than News Corp., but there is "no rush" to examine the plan, an unidentified Bancroft family member told the Financial Times.

GE (Charts, Fortune 500) owns the CNBC business television channel, and will face competition from News Corp (Charts, Fortune 500)., which is launching a business news channel of its own.

Talks are at an early stage and could collapse or result in another structure for a Dow Jones bid, both papers reported.

Such a company would also include Dow Jones's Barron's investment newspaper, 50 percent of the Economist magazine and interests in business newspapers in Russia, France, South Africa, India and Britain, the Journal reported.

A Bancroft family spokesman was not immediately available for comment. News Corp. declined to provide a comment to the Journal about the Pearson-GE talks.

Dow Jones also owns the Marketwatch.com business news Web site, the Factiva electronic news archive and Dow Jones Newswires.

Pearson has also sounded out Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp (Charts, Fortune 500) and privately held newspaper and magazine publisher Hearst Corp. as partners, the Financial Times reported.

Other names circulating as potential suitors for Dow Jones include billionaire Ron Burkle, who teamed with the union representing Dow Jones employees, as well as Philadelphia newspaper executive Brian Tierney.

The IAPE union, which represents 2,000 Dow Jones workers, also said earlier this month it also approached Berkshire Hathaway's (down $200.10 to $109,100.00, Charts, Fortune 500) Warren Buffett about a potential counter-offer to News Corp.'s bid.

Buffett said last month it was "very, very unlikely" that he would bid for Dow Jones, either as a personal investment or together with his company Berkshire Hathaway, citing a high bid already on the table from Murdoch.

Dow Jones (up $1.11 to $59.01, Charts) shares jumped over 3 percent in Friday afternoon trade on the NYSE. Pearson (up $0.21 to $17.21, Charts) shares were more than 1 percent higher.